00:00Boy, I don't know how painful that might be to some Browns fans to hear Baldy talking about that, our
00:06Odyssey NFL insider, moment to go.
00:08But the reason it's relevant is you have a brand new head coach.
00:13He was on the sidelines watching that transpire.
00:17And what do you know, Deshaun Watson right now, according to the reports that were not denied on Friday with
00:24the head coach in studio.
00:25And I will repeat, at no point was any of that reporting denied from Mary Kay.
00:32I saw since then Zach Jackson has said that Deshaun Watson is the leader.
00:37We've had other reports in town, other reporters in town that have said the same.
00:41It's early.
00:42So in the end, it's like, to me, who cares?
00:44But people do care.
00:45People absolutely care, especially if you're rooting for the other guy in this competition.
00:52So do you believe, Spencer German, who's in for Ken Carman today, we've got Joe Varden appearing on the show
00:58in about a half hour in Detroit.
01:00You're going to Detroit as well.
01:01Do you believe that it is a clean slate that Deshaun Watson is going to be the number one guy
01:09when all is said and done?
01:10I think that for Tom Munkin, it absolutely, he's coming in with this.
01:14He's coming in with no preconceived notions, I guess, is the way I would put it.
01:18I think it's harder for us, Lima, and fans of the team to disassociate what we've seen from Deshaun previously
01:27and even other guys previously.
01:29I mean, even Shador last year and Dylan Gabriel last year.
01:32Nobody's given Dylan Gabriel.
01:34It's funny.
01:35Everybody's ready to be like, well, hey, Tom Munkin's here so he can get the most out of Deshaun Watson
01:40or he can get the most out of Shador Sanders.
01:41That other coach couldn't.
01:42But then with Dylan Gabriel, we're all just like, I know that guy sucks.
01:46There's no leeway with him where it's like, well, maybe a new coach is good for him, too.
01:51Yeah, we have Dylan Gabriel had a great kick.
01:53I know we all think it's impossible.
01:55It's kind of funny how we pick and choose where we're applying that.
01:57But I was just, again, but no, I think for Tom Munkin, absolutely, he's coming in.
02:03He's been pretty clear about that.
02:04The idea that he's not holding things from Deshaun's games in 2023 against him or 2024 against him.
02:14He's trying to just pick the best quarterback.
02:16And honestly, Lima, like the thing that I continue to go back to that I don't know that people fully
02:21understand is like I'm somebody who has said from the beginning,
02:25I don't need to see Deshaun Watson ever play a football game again for the Cleveland Browns.
02:30Like I've seen everything I need to see.
02:33I've learned everything that I can possibly learn.
02:35To me, there's just no chance that the guy from six years ago, the fastest way to fall behind in
02:40this league, Lima, isn't like just getting hurt or whatever.
02:42It's you don't play competitive football regularly for six years.
02:48How am I supposed to believe that you even know how the game's changed and keep up with it all?
02:53The game changes so quick.
02:54It's hard to believe that anybody could.
02:57So I have no I have nothing else to learn about Deshaun Watson.
03:01I'd rather see Shador Sanders for that reason.
03:03But that's not how Tom Munkin can go about it.
03:05Tom Munkin is trying to win football games.
03:07This is his first chance to ever be a head coach in the NFL.
03:11He's he's trying to prove in year one that like he can squeeze what he can out of this roster.
03:16Like he has to ultimately pick the best quarterback.
03:18And yes, it's not that crazy to think that the guy who at one point was a top five quarterback
03:24in this league,
03:24and has seen a lot more than Dylan Gabriel and Shador Sanders have ever seen.
03:29He he he has forgotten more football than they even have have have seen at this point in their careers.
03:37Like, it's not far fetched to think that that guy at practice in the spring and in training camp and
03:43in preseason games where teams aren't really scheming things up for you is going to probably look like the best
03:48quarterback on the roster.
03:49He should.
03:50And if he doesn't, by the way, what does that say about him?
03:52He shouldn't be in a league if he can't beat out two guys that were just rookies last year and
03:56have like no experience whatsoever.
03:58So, well, that's for sure.
03:59Right.
04:00So it's no it's to me.
04:01It's not crazy to think that Deshaun ultimately wins the job, even if that's not what I want to see
04:05happen.
04:05Man, it is.
04:06It's crazy to find a relevant comp like this for somebody that it's been this long since they play good
04:10football.
04:11And this one this comp doesn't even work because he didn't play good football at the start of his career.
04:16But Geno Smith went like eight years, nine years.
04:19That is such an aberration.
04:21I don't think that that even applies to this case at all.
04:25The only question really is for Watson, like, what could he possibly be after having all those surgeries?
04:32Because the body does start to break down.
04:34I didn't even mention the injuries.
04:35That's that's the best point of all.
04:36Like there was the shoulder, which now everyone's saying, like, ah, now that now that he's had a year basically
04:42just to rest and recover and go through rehab for other injuries, that shoulder is not even an issue anymore.
04:47Fine.
04:48But like the only thing that you felt even slightly reassured on Deshaun with with the last couple of years
04:55was, well, hey, he's still a freak athlete.
04:57So even if he doesn't throw the football, well, there's still something to tap into there.
05:01Do we even know at this point that he's going to be able to bring that to the table?
05:04Like, can we can we definitively say he's still going to be a great athlete after rupturing his Achilles twice
05:09and having that surgery twice?
05:11And I've always heard like it takes some time after you have an Achilles tear to even feel like you
05:16get kind of back to full strength on being able to do some of the things that you did before.
05:21So like that, he could still be in that process of things like I just there's nothing that I don't
05:27feel in any way we're going to learn anything about Deshaun Watson.
05:29But I do understand where he might look like the best quarterback at practice.
05:32I put there's so many questions that he has to answer the athleticism piece, the injury piece, the can he
05:38throw the football thing?
05:39He was dirty and all those passes when he was last on the field.
05:42Like it's just too much, too many things to overcome for me to believe there's anything left in there.
05:45All right.
05:46Meanwhile, somebody with a very, very different view of all of this, former NFL exec.
05:51He's on ESPN, play his audio from time to time.
05:53Mike Tannenbaum had this to say about the quarterback competition and I think might be leading Shador Sanders.
06:01Mike T, from a big picture perspective, which one makes more sense to you if you're Cleveland?
06:05Shador Sanders, what are we talking about here?
06:06Deshaun Watson has played in 19 games since 2000.
06:09Shador Sanders, we need to know what we have.
06:12So in the future, we know if we need a quarterback to me, this would be improbable if he played.
06:16So again, outside looking in, like it's just, it's just as obvious.
06:21If you're expecting the Browns just to be bad this year, then you throw Shador out there.
06:25You see if he, if he takes some kind of a crazy leap, they've built, they've rebuilt an offensive line.
06:32They've got wide receiver weapons.
06:33He showed some splash play potential last year.
06:37And oh, by the way, you're in the final year of the Shador contract.
06:41Like, what is it even do if, if Shador goes out there and he's at best case scenario, he's middle
06:48of the road, average quarterback.
06:49If everything went his way.
06:50And I, I, I don't think I could find a lot of people that would even bet that that would
06:54be the case.
06:55But if it did, then what are you even doing with that information?
06:58You're really going to go out there and use that to sign them to an extension.
07:01Right.
07:01So that's where I think somebody like a former exec is looking at it and going, hey, they're not supposed
07:07to win games anyway.
07:08They've got like the fourth worst football odds to win the Super Bowl anyway.
07:12Throw Shador out there.
07:14Let's see.
07:14That's a dart.
07:15If the dart hits, great.
07:17If the dart hits for Watson, that might compound your issues over the next five years.
07:22One thing I've thought about a lot lately with this quarterback situation, because Todd Munkin said this.
07:27I can't remember if it was at the annual meetings or somewhere else.
07:32He's gotten asked about the quarterback so many times at this point.
07:34Like I can't keep track of like every time he's been asked what he says, but he at one point
07:38talked about how one of the things that's going to help determine who gets the job or wins the job
07:42is going to be who the team rallies around.
07:46Right.
07:47And I think right now, based off of last year and like, you know, Myles Garrett's made comments about like,
07:52yeah, Shador should be the first guy up.
07:53He earned it, whatever.
07:54I think you could argue that the team probably rallies around him the most, but here's the thing.
07:59The guys that wouldn't rally necessarily around Deshaun aren't even really in the building anymore.
08:04Like this is a, this is a new, there's a lot of new on this roster and a lot of
08:08new on this, on this offense in particular.
08:11Like a lot of the guys that pushed back on Deshaun and had some of those cryptic comments were Jack
08:17Conklin and even Joe Batonio to a degree kind of alluded to the idea that like, we got to do
08:21what we do best and not just build around one player, all those different things.
08:25But like, those guys are all gone.
08:27So there's a lot of new here.
08:28So the idea that like, and maybe guys in defense who have been here for a while, maybe don't necessarily
08:33need to see Deshaun, but he's not, if you're talking about rallying around a guy, Tom Munkin is going to
08:39be looking at like the offensive guys and how they respond to different quarterbacks.
08:42So in that respect, it kind of works in Deshaun's favor where it's like a clean slate for him, where
08:46there's all these young, new guys who are going to be like, oh, you were a top five quarterback at
08:51one point.
08:51Like, tell me the, what you've learned and tell me what you know.
08:54And so I think that kind of works in his favor, but yeah, man, like I, I just think it's
08:59easy to sit on the outside looking in.
09:01And for us, because we have, we get to formulate these opinions to talk about them to be like, I
09:05don't need to see anything from Deshaun, but Tom Munkin can't operate that way because he's trying to go win
09:09football games.
09:09If he determines that Deshaun's the best quarterback on the practice field, that's probably who's going to start.
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